DailyTech has received confirmation from Foxconn engineers that the upcoming Intel Broadwater 96x family of chipsets will not support CrossFire operation at launch. This comes as a surprise since ATI has previously supported CrossFire on Intel 945, 955, and 975 chipsets. Users looking for a DDR2-800 MHz supporting chipset will have to turn to the upcoming ATI RD600 which promises DDR2-800/1066 MHz compatibility as well as two full speed PCI Express x16 slots.

It is unknown if ATI has any intention of supporting CrossFire with the 96x family of chipsets in the future. The outlook is quite bleak since ATI has its own enthusiasts Intel CrossFire platform. With the upcoming RD600 it looks like ATI is trying to keep CrossFire compatibility limited to ATI chipsets as NVIDIA has done with SLI. Current Intel 945, 955X and 975X chipsets will continue to have CrossFire support.

Intel is expected to announced the Broadwater family of chipsets on June 7, 2006 at Computex Taipei.